A sheriff's department in Georgia is trying to raise awareness about heat stroke deaths by filming the scary effects that sitting in a hot car had on one of their deputies.
The Forsyth County Sheriff's Office posted the six-minute video of Deputy Robin Regan on its Facebook page last week, and it has since been viewed over 3 million times.
Regan told BuzzFeed News that they had the idea to make the video after multiple hot car deaths in their county this year. "We wanted to do something that was very visual so that people would really, really get the point," he said.
The deputy spent about 25 minutes total in the car with the windows rolled up. When he first got in, it was about 96 degrees. He immediately started sweating.
In just seven minutes, his heart rate jumped to twice its normal rate.
After about 15 minutes in the car, Regan said he began to feel sick. "I started feeling not quite right," he said.
By the end of the experiment, the temperature of the inside door had climbed to 125 degrees, while the dashboard's temperature had risen to 177 degrees.
The deputy's heart rate had climbed to 151 BPM, and he later realized he had entered the early stages of heatstroke. “I got a little disoriented, I got a little sluggish for the rest of the day, and I felt physically ill," he said.
The department wants to make it clear that it is dangerous for children and pets to be left in a hot car for even just a few minutes. Regan said the effects he felt would likely be even worse for a child, because they can't regulate their body as well.
The response to the video has been very exciting for the deputies, Regan said.
"We're just extremely glad that we could raise so much awareness, and our hope is that we could prevent just one of these cases from happening," he said.